Uneventful Giants' day of reckoning finally might be here

The Athletics have tried to offer as much cover as they can, but eventually the Giants-In-Freefall exhibition would have to come to light.
 
So here it is, in the revolting glory -- a team in the midst of what playoff contenders would say is a promising set of games but is in fact becoming what their opponents would say is a promising set of games. A team staring a massive rebuild in the face while holding its hands over its ears and humming loudly to drown out the noise.
 
They went to Cincinnati at the outer fringes of the playoff races -- six games behind Arizona for the division lead, 6 ½ behind Milwaukee and Philadelphia -- and after a weekend of non-hitting, non-pitching, non-winning squalor, those numbers are eight and 7 ½. They are going to New York to play the Mets, who are as shambolic as ever and still playing better baseball than San Francisco. In fact, the only teams who aren’t this month are Baltimore, Kansas City and Miami, who are trying to lose, and Detroit, which has abandoned pitching as a strategy.
 
In other words, the offseason is here, and the question isn’t when the remodel begins, but how massive a task it will be.
 
The Giants always have erred on the side of holding rather than folding. They have clung to the good old days and the good old names for the better part of a decade, hoping either to rekindle the old magic, defy the shrinking margins for error or just plain kick the rebuild can down the road. They won titles by underpaying their young stars and rewarding them in the unproductive by-and-by, which has engendered loyalty from within but not attraction from without.
 
In other words, they positioned themselves to be in the worst possible place at the July trade deadline, neither buyers nor sellers because there is nothing they don’t need and nothing they can offer, and since then they are 6-10.
 
But this isn’t just recency bias. Observers and fans thought Vegas was on to something when it saw the Giants as an 87-win team in March, but the lads promptly headed to the middle of a large pack in the National League and stayed there through a bad May, a good June and a bad July. They are an unsustainable fourth place/11th place team, and the day of reckoning is upon them.
 
But the rebuild won’t involve Buster Posey or Madison Bumgarner because that is not the Giants Way. It is a franchise built on rewarding the back end of careers that served well on the front end, and it is hard to imagine that not remaining the case.
 
But it is also a franchise that is recognizing that one massive name isn’t going to resuscitate this, or jump-start a new era of glory. They need help in numbers, and grafting one huge name like Bryce Harper (a pipe dream at best, a lunatic’s raving at worst) onto this roster isn’t going to change that because it needs help nearly everywhere. Frankly, this team is lucky to be as close as it is, and that’s only because the National League lacks the powerhouses the American League has in relative abundance (two teams on pace to win 100, five to win 94 or more).
 
But it isn’t really close. They have built an uneventful season with uneventful achievements, and in this adrenalized world, in a crowded entertainment landscape, nothing plays worse than uneventful.
 
Now the A’s -- they’re eventful. That might sting, but for the moment they are doing the Giants a great service by providing cover for San Francisco’s lack of inspiration. It’s not the goal, mind you, but sometimes things just gots to be that way.